Hong Kong fee hikes for non-locals ‘will not harm enrolments’

Hong Kong’s public universities have significantly raised tuition fees for non-local students, which experts say reflects a tightening of the fiscal purse as well as the heightened cost of delivering higher education.

Seven of Hong Kong’s eight public universities have published their non-local tuition fees for the 2027-28 academic year. According to analysis in the South China Morning Post, tuition fees across the institutions rose by an average of 17 per cent compared with the current academic year.

From 2027, a non-local student enrolled in a STEM undergraduate course at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) will pay the equivalent of £26,972 per year, which is 12 per cent more than the previous year.

Meanwhile, an undergraduate medic or dentist at HKU will pay £56,835 per year. This equates to a 137 per cent jump, the biggest across all universities and disciplines. 

Joshua Ka Ho Mok, president and chair professor of comparative policy at Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, said the tuition fee hikes should be seen in the context of reduced government funding.

Previously frozen for 27 years, tuition fees at Hong Kong’s public universities have increased by an average of 5.5 per cent annually since the 2025-26 academic year.

Last year, the government also asked the eight public universities to collectively return £385.42m from their financial reserves on a one-off basis, and a progressive 2 per cent annual funding cut to public universities’ funding was introduced. 

Mok framed tuition fee hikes as part of this trend of constrained public finances, suggesting increases were necessary for public universities to cover their “overheads”.

But there is a risk that more costly overseas tuition might deter students from lower-income countries from attending university in Hong Kong, he cautioned.

“We are very keen to get good students not necessarily coming from the Chinese mainland because I think diversifying and internationalising the learning experience would be great for local students too.” 

According to the University Grants Committee in 2024-25, students from mainland China accounted for 79 per cent of non-local enrolments in Hong Kong.

Ewan Wright, associate professor in the department of education policy and leadership at The Education University of Hong Kong, said that the fee increase reflected “the substantial resources involved in providing high-quality, internationally competitive higher education programmes”. 

These fee increases should also be considered in the context of Hong Kong’s “rising status as a world-class education hub”, Wright said, classifying the region as “an important example of a higher education system seeking to capitalise on shifts in global higher education and student mobility” including stricter student visa policies in some Western countries.

Jack Ng, former assistant director at HKU who currently works as head of corporate communications at Votee AI, claimed that Hong Kong’s “core value proposition” for non-local students remained “fundamentally intact” despite any fee adjustments, detailing an “unmatched proximity to the Greater Bay Area tech ecosystem” and “world-class academic rankings”. 

As Hong Kong universities continue to grow their global visibility and research footprint, Ng argued that fee adjustments reflect a “broader structural realignment in higher education governance” in the region.

He felt that the uplift in tuition “will compel Hong Kong institutions to radically accelerate their administrative digital transformation” rather than drive a mass exodus of students to alternative destinations.

rosalind.skillen@timeshighereducation.com